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Tonya Papanikolas Reporting Officers made three drug busts today across the Salt Lake Valley. Two of them happened on the East side, another is going on as we speak, in South Salt Lake.
This afternoon a resident in this quiet residential Millcreek neighborhood noticed some car drivers engaging in suspicious activity. So the neighbor called police. It turned out it was a drug exchange. The dealer was arrested.
Sgt. Paul Jaroscak, Salt lake County Sheriff's Office: "The detectives are telling me that this has been an increasing problem, especially in this little corridor here, where people are meeting and doing street buys."
Henry Zoetmulder, Neighbor: "It's really kind of silly that you live in a nice, quiet neighborhood, and all of a sudden, something like this has to happen."
Evelyn Waters, Neighbor: "It's a real nice neighborhood. I'm just really shocked."
Deputies say more drug deals are going down in quiet neighborhoods like this because the suspects think they're not being watched as closely by police. But drug enforcement agents say neighbors need to be on the lookout for exchanges between cars or a lot of traffic at homes.
Mike Wells, DEA Metro Task Force: "It might be at a specific time of the day. Neighbors might notice 10 or 12 cars pull up to this house, folks go and stay a short time."
This morning, four people were taken into custody in an upscale Cottonwood Heights neighborhood. Neighbors say they often saw a lot of cars at the house. Police say the suspects were distributing meth at the home.
Sheri Caldwell, Neighbor: "I guess it's everywhere, unless it's taken care of."
We wanted to compare drug activity on the East and West sides so we took two cities of comparable populations, Sandy and West Jordan, and looked at their drug statistics for 2004. We found Sandy had 747 drug offenses. West Jordan had 617.
So again, drug experts say it doesn't really matter where you live, drug crimes cross all income and geographic lines.
